MORE THAN A YEAR AGO, MOVEON.ORG BOASTED IT “BOUGHT” THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY; now, apparently, Cindy Sheehan is delivering its marching orders. First, John Murtha jumped on her unilateral surrender bandwagon. Now Dianne Feinstein is delivering Sheehan’s juridical demands.

Two weeks ago, Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, had emphatically ruled out filibustering Samuel Alito. On “Face the Nation” on January 15, she said:

I don’t see those kinds of egregious things emerging that would justify a filibuster. When it comes to filibustering a Supreme Court appointment, you really have to have something out there, whether it’s gross moral turpitude or something that comes to the surface. This is a man I might disagree with. That doesn’t mean he shouldn't be on the court.

She complemented his composure and added, “I think there is an additional weight you must give to his background, his qualifications and his ability.” However, last Friday Cindy Sheehan issued a press release from Venezuela headlined, “Sheehan to Feinstein: Fillibuster Alito or I’ll Challenge Your Senate Seat.” In her primary campaign threat, Sheehan stated, “I’m appalled that Diane [sic.] Feinstein wouldn’t recognize how dangerous Alito’s nomination is to upholding the values of our constitution and restricting the usurpation of presidential powers, for which I’ve already paid the ultimate price.”

Less than one-third of Americans opposed the likeable and competent Alito; fewer still wanted him filibustered. Democratic senators Ben Nelson, Tim Johnson, and Robert Byrd had just announced they intended to vote to confirm him. Nonetheless, Feinstein quickly reversed course, announcing her support for the John Kerry-Ted Kennedy filibuster. She ultimately voted for the motion Monday. (Predictably, it tanked, and Alito should be confirmed before tonight’s State of the Union Address.)

Her stated reason was that Alito would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade – an expectation she had announced weeks ago, when she opposed a filibuster – but it’s inconceivable Feinstein would have shifted such her mainstream and very public stance virtually overnight without this threat. In true leftist fashion, Dianne Feinstein caved into an adversary in the hopes she would be left alone – and once again, the strategy failed.

Left without an issue, Sheehan decided to justify her brewing campaign by attacking Feinstein as a warmonger:

She voted for the war. She continues to vote for the funding. She won't call for an immediate withdrawal of the troops. I think our senator needs to be held accountable for her support of George Bush and his war policies.

Her run is all but assured. Sheehan promised to speak with her three children, but “I can't see if they think it's going to help peace that they would be opposed to me doing it.” …And this author can’t see her caring. According to the New York Times, Sheehan broke up her marriage “as a result of the war, and of her activism.” At the same time, she refused to budge from her ditch in Crawford when 21-year-old son Andy begged her via e-mail “to come home because you need to support us at home.” Yet we’re supposed to believe she is so dedicated to her children that she’ll travel the world to uphold their memory. No wonder her own family members state Cindy is “promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation.” Now, she’s poised to parlay her son’s reputation into a political run.

I don’t know enough about a lot of issues, like Social Security or tax codes – what I know about is the war in Iraq, and I know that that is wrong and that Democrats who support it by voting for appropriations are doing something wrong. But I don’t know enough about other things to be a good U.S. senator.

She still does not believe she will win, but she hopes to draw attention to other “peace candidates” running nationwide. (Medea Benjamin, a longtime Green Party hopeful who will has made a living off promoting such “peace candidates,” has been her key sponsor and protagonist.) Regardless of Sheehan’s electoral success, she’s already experienced the thrill of setting the Democratic Party’s agenda. Which speaks poorly of Sen. Feinstein’s integrity and the Left’s sanity.

Sheehan made her announcement from the World Social Forum, which she hailed as “the kind of event where many ideas are exchanged and the best are promoted.” The WSF – which was held in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela – is a worldwide socialist “Fifth International” that has played home to everyone from Noam Chomsky, to Cuban Castroites, to Colombian FARC terrorists. In 2003, WSF participants physically abused Jewish observers from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

This rich atmosphere prompted Sheehan to post a blog entitled “A New World is Possible,” in which she asked, “How can we condone, or even allow, are [sic.] leaders to kill our brothers and sisters like this?” She also asserted Hugo Chavez is not a dictator, but “a democratically elected leader who is very popular in his country.” (He is popular. Or else.) She and her fellow Code Pink radicals met with Chavez during the visit, boasting even about his singing voice.

Cindy Sheehan, Jodie Evans, Hugo Chavez, and Medea Benjamin.

The trip came just after Sheehan introduced the new concept of “matriotism.” “Matriotism is the opposite of patriotism,” she wrote in a blog that also denounced “the nationalist ‘Pledge of Allegiance’” and “the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ a hymn to war.”

Having gone as far out as she could to deify her dead son, Casey – whom she claims she hears calling President Bush an “idiot” from Heaven – she elevated him to further sanctity in a recent interview with The Irish Times’ Ronan Sheehan. Sheehan’s lone political foray has been to encourage California schools to ban military recruiters, although doing so would cost them federal funding. In the Times, she claimed perfidious military recruiters “made Casey several promises in writing that they broke.” Naturally, no documentation was supplied. “His recruiter promised him he’d never see combat because he’d scored so high on the military entrance exam.” Of course, Casey did not have to see combat; he asked his commander for permission to go into battle. Sheehan admits as much in the same interview: “He volunteered on the mission that killed him. He wanted to go save his buddies.”

Not only that, Casey – who she claimed wanted to become a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church – “was a virgin when he died; he wanted to save that for his wife on their wedding night as a wedding present.”[1] Casey was a virgin sacrifice – like Edward Woodward in The Wicker Man.(She also called the Irish government “complicit in war crimes,” because they let U.S. planes land on the Emerald Isle; and they accuse us of guilt-by-association?)

Sheehan will take part tonight in the alternate State of the Union organized by the Left’s newest pro-terror front, The World Can’t Wait (WCW). WCW was founded by C. Clark Kissinger, head of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Maoist splinter group so radical and bloodthirsty other Maoists distance themselves from it. WCW is led by Allen Lang, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade. Last month, WCW took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to run a statement – signed by Sheehan – stating: “People look at all this [country] and think of Hitler – and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come.”

The fascist allegation is highly ironic coming from Sheehan, as she became a heroine to David Duke, the National Alliance, and a gaggle of Stormfront.org “white nationalists.” She did not turn away David Duke’s aide and “right-hand man” James Kelso when he and a contingent of Stormfront.org hatemongers showed up at Camp Casey last August 27-28 (the same weekend Al Sharpton visited). Their purpose was, in Kelso’s words, “to let folks know or to remind them again, that White Nationalists were the first and the most adamant opponents of a war foisted upon the great soldiers of our Armed Forces by lying Neocons” and “AIPAC leaders.” Kelso praised Mother Sheehan as a “salt-of-the-earth White” woman who “is aware of and despises the Zionist control of our government.” Kelso was inspired by his private meeting and her previous statements, when she sent an e-mail to Nightline producers saying her son “was killed for lies and for a PNAC [Project for a New American Century] Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel.” Sheehan has lied she did not write the e-mail, never quite getting her story straight; the mother of the man she alternately accused of hacking into her computer and altering her e-mail has called Sheehan out on it; Cindy has not responded.

James Kelso, Cindy Sheehan, and another Stormfront.org activist.

Michael Lerner alleges Sheehan renounced David Duke at his synagogue. But strangely, Sheehan didn’t denounce him when his right-hand man was at Camp Casey. And Lerner’s veracity has been questioned before….

Now the darling of David Duke has pulled the strings of Dianne Feinstein – and will soon run to displace her from office. And the Left loves every minute of it. The Village Voice floated the idea of Cindy Sheehan running for president in 2008. Sheehan believes she is far more qualified than Condoleeza Rice or Hillary Clinton, venturing, “I don’t think those women have maternal instincts, not even true human instincts.” She also lashed out at Hillary’s husband, saying Bill

should have been impeached, but not for a blow job. His policies are responsible for killing more Iraqis that George Bush. I don't understand why to rise to the level of being president of my country one has to be a monster.

Yesterday, she broadened her condemnation of Washington further yet. Cindy Sheehan told the antiwar group Democracy Rising anyone “who said anything about [Iraq having] WMDs…should be investigated and impeached.”[2] That would be a hefty list, indeed.

Cindy Sheehan and Venezuela’s Despot express mutual admiration.

Sheehan already has one endorsement for her prospective senate bid. According to the Associated Press: “[Hugo] Chavez was ‘really excited’ to hear she was considering running for the Senate. ‘He said, why don't I run for president?...I just laughed.’”

So will the voters, Cindy.

So should the Democratic Party, which could and should use the Sheehan/Medea Benjamin insurgency as its “Sister Souljah moment” to rebound to the political mainstream in time for the midterm elections this November. Instead, it appears the Democrats have allowed their agenda to be set by Sheehan and others who bow at the altar of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and “freedom fighter” Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

ENDNOTES:

1. For a more traditional account of the behavior of twentysomething soldiers about to ship off to war, read the memoirs of Jesse Ventura.

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